how do you prevent distutils from downloading and building packages without consent?

[lkcl]

> read the setuptools documentation? Didn't you *test* your setup.py
> before making it available to the world?

 yes - and it worked on my debian linux box.  so, off it went.  turns
out that it worked because i had python-setuptools preinstalled.

> > alarmed to find that setup.py, thanks to distutils, was not only
> > downloading but also attempting to _compile_ setuptools.  fortunately,
> > the compile actually failed.
>
> What is so gut-wrenchingly awful about "compile" that you must
> underline its every occurrence?

 :)  the disparity between the expectations and the actual behaviour.
but, given that both you and gabriel spotted that the setup.py uses
setuptools (which i'm not familiar with) that would make sense.  duh.

 that's what i was missing - thank you both, john and gabriel.  i tend
to cut/paste quite horrendous amounts of bits of code together.  most
of the time, it works.  some of the time, i miss things.  much
appreciated that you pointed the mistake out.

l.